POW! Stunning, large-scale, air brushed PAINTINGS of fireworks! Yes. Paintings. This is the work of LA based artist Samantha Fields. Now, here’s where my problem comes in… I can’t decide which I love more… her magical fireworks, or her rainy/misty headlights at night:

See? How can I pick a favorite? I just can’t. Here is a description of this body of work, and a fascinating explanation of her technique:

In this body of work, Fields immortalizes points in time that are relished, lost and longed for in a single instant—what the artist calls “halcyon moments.” Her paintings are documents of these otherwise ephemeral occurrences: smoke lingering in the sky after a firework has faded, the blur of colored city lights reflected on wet pavement, or transient shadows shifting across a nighttime landscape.

…

What a camera can record in a split second takes longer to translate into painting, complicating our expectations of photographs as instantaneous replications of an observed reality. Fields uses an airbrush to apply hundreds of thinly misted layers of acrylic paint to canvas or paper, creating rich, almost incandescent, surfaces. By focusing on representations of memory, enigmatic and unfixed, Fields expressively captures the energy and emotion of a fleeting moment.

{Samantha currently has a show at Traywick Contemporary in Berkeley, CA. It will be up until May 25th, 2014. You should go.}